[Mike Hammer 03] - Vengeance Is Mine (11 page)

“Trying?”

“Hell yes. I don’t want to wind up a grocery clerk.” She didn’t get what I meant. My grin split into a smile and that into a laugh. I had no right to feel so happy, but way back in my head I knew that the sun would come up one day and show me the answer.

“What brought that on? Or are you laughing at me?”

“Not you, Juno. I couldn’t laugh at you.” She stuck out her tongue at me. “I was laughing at the way life works out. It gets pretty complicated sometimes, then all of a sudden it’s as simple as hell, if hell can be simple. Like the potbellies with all the bare-backed babes in the Bowery. You know something ... I didn’t think I’d find you there.”

She shrugged her shoulders gracefully. “Why not? A great many of your ‘potbellies’ are wonderful business contacts.”

“I understand you’re tops in the line.”

I could see that pleased her. She nodded thoughtfully. “Not without reason, Mike. It has meant a good deal of exacting work both in and out of the office. We only handle work for the better houses and use the best in the selection of models. Anton, you know, is comparatively unknown as a person, simply because he refuses to take credit for his photography, but his work is far above any of the others. I think you’ve seen the interest he takes in his job.”

“I would too,” I said.

Her tongue came out again. “You would, too. I bet nothing would get photographed.”

“I bet a lot would get accomplished.”

“In that case you’d be running headlong into our code of ethics.”

“Nuts. Pity the poor photographer. He does all the work and the potbellies have all the fun.” I dragged on my cigarette and squinted my eyes. “You know, Clyde has a pretty business for himself.”

My casual reference to the guy brought her eyebrows up. “Do you know him?”

“Sure, from way back. Ask him to tell you about me someday.”

“I don’t know him that well, myself. But if I ever get the chance I will. He’s the perfect underworld type, don’t you think?”

“Right out of the movies. When did he start running that place?”

Juno tapped her cheek with a delicate forefinger. “Oh ... about six months ago, I think. I remember him stopping in the office to buy photographs in wholesale lots. He had the girls sign all the pictures and invited them to his opening. It was all very secret of course. I didn’t get to go myself until I heard the girls raving about the place. He did the same thing with most of the agencies in town.”

“He’s got a brain, that boy,” I drawled. “It’s nice to have your picture on the wall. He played the girls for slobs and they never knew it. He knew damn well that a lot of them traveled with the moneybags and would pull them into his joint. When word got around that there was open gambling to boot, business got better and better. Now he gets the tourists too. They think it’s all very smart and exciting ... the kind who go around hoping for a raid so they can cut their pictures out of the papers and send them home to the folks for laughs.”

She stared at me, frowning.

“I wonder who he pays off?” I mused.

“Who?”

“Clyde. Somebody is taking the long green to keep the place going. Clyde’s shelling out plenty to somebody with a lot of influence, otherwise he would have had the cops down his throat on opening night.”

Juno said impatiently. “Oh, Mike, those tactics went out with the Prohibition era ...” then her voice got curious. “Or didn’t they?”

I looked across the table at this woman who wore her beauty so proudly and arrogantly. “You’ve only seen the best side of things so far, kid. Plenty goes on you wouldn’t want to look at.”

She tossed her head. “It seems incredible that those things still happen, Mike.”

I started to slap my fist against my palm gently. “Incredible, but it’s happening,” I said. “I wonder what would happen if I shafted my old buddy Dinky Williams?” My mouth twisted into a grin. “Maybe it’s an angle. Maybe....” I let my sentence trail off and stared at the wall.

Juno signaled the waiter and he came back with another round of cocktails. I checked my watch and found myself in the middle of the afternoon. “We’ll make these our last, oke?”

She leaned her chin on her hands, smiling. “I hate to have you leave me.”

“It’s not a cinch for me, either.” She was still smiling and I said, “I asked another beautiful girl who could have had ten other guys why she picked me to hold hands with. She gave me a good answer. What’s yours, Juno?”

Her eyes were a fathomless depth that tried to draw me down into them. Her mouth was still curved in a smile that went softer and softer until only a trace of it was left. Full, lovely lips that barely had to move to form the words. “I detest people who pamper me. I detest people who insist upon putting me on a pedestal. I think I like to be treated rough and you’re the only one who has tried it.”

“I haven’t tried anything.”

“No. But you’ve been thinking of it. Sometimes you don’t even speak politely.”

She was a mind reader like all good goddesses should be and she was right. Quite right. I didn’t know what the hell was going on in my head, but sometimes when I looked at her I wanted to reach across the table and smack her right in the teeth. Even when I thought of it I could feel the tendons in the back of my hand start twitching. Maybe a goddess was just too damn much for me. Maybe I’d been used to my own particular kind of guttersnipe too long. I kicked the idea out of my mind and unlocked the stare we were holding on each other.

“Let’s go home,” I said. “There’s still some day and a long night ahead of me.”

She was wanting me to ask her to continue this day and not break it off now, but I didn’t let myself think it. Juno pushed back her chair and stood up. “The nose. First I must powder the nose, Mike.” I watched her walk away from me, watched the swing of her hips and the delicate way she seemed to balance on her toes. I wasn’t the only one watching, either. A kid who had artist written all over her in splotches of paint was leaning against the partition of the booth behind me. Her eyes were hard and hot and followed Juno every step of the way. She was another one of those mannish things that breed in the half-light of the so-called aesthetical world. I got a look that told me I was in for competition and she took off after Juno. She came back in a minute and her face was pulled tight in a scowl and I gave her a nasty laugh. Some women, yes. Others, nix.

My nose got powdered first and I waited by the door for her after throwing a good week’s pay to the cashier.

The snow that had slacked off started again in earnest. A steady stream of early traffic poured out of the business section, heading home before the stuff got too deep. Juno had snow tires on the heap so I wasn’t worried about getting caught, but it took us twice the time to get back uptown as it did to come down.

Juno decided against going back to the office and told me to go along Riverside Drive. At the most fashionable of the cross streets I turned off and went as far as the middle of the block. She indicated a new gray stone building that stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the others, boasting a doorman in a maroon uniform and topcoat. She leaned back and sighed, “We’re home.”

“Leave the car here?”

“Won’t you need it to get where you’re going?”

“I couldn’t afford to put gas in this buggy. No, I’ll take a cab.”

I got out and opened the door. The maroon uniform walked over and tipped his hat. Juno said, “Have the car taken to the garage for me please?”

He took the keys. “Certainly, Miss Reeves.”

She turned to me with a grin. The snow swirling around her clung to the fur of her collar and hat, framing her face with a sprinkling of white. “Come up for a drink?” I hesitated, “Just one, Mike, then I’ll let you go.”

“Okay, baby, just one and don’t try to make it any more.”

Juno didn’t have a penthouse, but it was far enough up to make a good Olympus. There was no garishness about the place, big as it was. The furnishings and the fixtures were matched in the best of taste, designed for complete, comfortable living.

I kept my coat and hat on while she whipped up a cocktail, my eyes watching the lithe grace of her movements. There was an unusual symmetry to her body that made me want to touch and feel. Our eyes met in the mirror over the sofa and there was the same thing in hers as there must have been in mine.

She spun around with an eloquent gesture and held out the glasses. Her voice was low and husky again. “I’m just a breeze past thirty, Mike. I’ve known many men. I’ve had many men too, but none that I really wanted. One day soon I’m going to want you.”

My spine chilled up suddenly and the crazy music let loose in my head because she had the light in her hair again. The stem of the glass broke off in my fingers, tearing into my palm. The back of my neck got hot and I felt the sweat pop out on my forehead.

I moved so the light would be out of her hair and the gold would be gone from it, covering up the insane hatred of memory by lifting my hand to drink from the bowl of the broken glass.

It spoiled the picture for me, a picture that should be beautiful and desirable, scarred by something that should be finished but kept coming back.

I put the pieces of the glass down on the window sill and she said, “You looked at me that way again, Mike.”

This time I forced the memory out of my mind. I slipped my hand over hers and ran my fingers through her hair, sifting its short silky loveliness. “I’ll make it up to you sometime, Juno. I can’t help thinking and it hasn’t got anything to do with you.”

“Make it up to me now.”

I gave her ear a little pull. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

She pouted and her eyes tried to convince me.

I couldn’t tell her that it was because there was a time and place for everything, and though this was the time and place she wasn’t the person. I was only a mortal. A mortal doesn’t undress a goddess and let his eyes feast and his hands feel and his body seek fulfillment.

Then too maybe that wasn’t the reason at all. Maybe she reminded me of something else I could never have.

Never.

She said it slowly. “Who was she, Mike? Was she lovely?”

I couldn’t keep the words back. I tried, but they wouldn’t stay there. “She was lovely. She was the most gorgeous thing that ever lived and I was in love with her. But she did something and I played God; I was the judge and I the jury and the sentence was death. I shot her right in the gut and when she died I died too.”

Juno never said a word. Only her eyes moved. They softened, offered themselves to me, trying to convince me that I wasn’t dead ... not to her.

I lit a cigarette and stuck it in my mouth, then got the hell out of there before her eyes became too convincing. I felt her eyes burning in my back because we both knew I’d be back.

Juno, goddess of marriage and births, queen of the lesser gods and goddesses. Why wasn’t she Venus, goddess of beauty and love? Juno was a queen and she didn’t want to be. She wanted to be a woman.

 

Darkness had come prematurely, but the reflected lights on the whiteness of the snow made the city brighter than ever. Each office building discharged a constant stream of people clutching their collars tight at the throat. I joined the traffic that pressed against the sides of the buildings trying to get away from the stinging blast of air, watching them escape into the mouths of the kiosks.

I grabbed a cab, stayed in it until I reached Times Square, then got out and ducked into a bar for a quick beer. When I came out there were no empty cabs around so I started walking down Broadway toward Thirty-third. Every inch it was a fight against the snow and the crowd. My feet were soaked and the crease was out of my pants. Halfway there the light changed suddenly and the cars coming around the corner forced the pedestrians back on the curb.

Somebody must have slipped because there was a tinkle of glass than a splintering crash as the front came out of a store showcase on the corner. Those who jumped out of the way were crammed in by others who wanted to see what happened. A cop wormed in through the melee and stood in front of the window and I got out through the path he left behind him.

When I reached Thirty-third I turned east hoping to find a taxi to get over to the parking lot and decided to give it up as a bad job and walk the rest of the way after one more look.

I stepped out on the curb to look down the street when the plate glass in a window behind me twanged and split into a spider web of cracks. Nobody had touched it this time, either. A car engine roared and all I saw was the top half of a face looking out from the back window of a blue sedan and it was looking straight at me for a long second before it pulled out of sight.

My eyes felt tight and my lips were pulled back over my teeth. My voice cut into the air and faces turned my way. “Twice the same day,” I said, “right on Broadway, too. The crazy bastard, the crazy son-of-a-bitch!”

I didn’t remember getting to the car lot or driving out through traffic. I must have been muttering to myself because the drivers of cars that stopped alongside me at red lights would look over and shake their heads like I was nuts or something. Maybe I was. It scares me to be set up as a target right off the busiest street in the world.

That first window. I thought it was an accident. The second one had a bullet hole in the middle of it just before it came apart and splashed all over the sidewalk.